


your bridges are burning

by oceansinmychest



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Antagonism, Blasphemy, Female-Centric, Lilly centric fic, One Shot, Reflection, Season/Series 04, Smoking, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-23 22:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21328030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: On patrol in the crawling night, Lilly recognizes the futility of the situation.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	your bridges are burning

**Author's Note:**

> I always appreciated Lilly for her complexities in the first season, but the final season left me horrified by what she became. I thought that the last game was a poignant end to the series. I grew up alongside it so I’m sad that it’s reached its end. I wanted to tap into Lilly’s character some more by poking around in a one-shot. I neither condone Lilly’s actions nor share her beliefs. She’s hurt people, kids, and that’s not okay. 
> 
> Ouch, she makes my heart hurt. Clementine's growth was immense and she's such an awe inspiring young lady.
> 
> This piece takes place right before Delta attacks Clem's group. Title's named after some lyrics from "Fire" By: PVRIS.

On patrol in the crawling night, Lilly recognizes the futility of the situation. At a temporary base with the boat docked, she paces the pier, caged by vindication and the past that rides on her faded coattails. Her jacket clings to her railroad thin body like a second skin. She chews on the inside of her cheek until it hollows. From the idle gnawing, the blood in her mouth is a difficult taste to forget. Mean and bold, Lilly juts out her jaw. She spits out a glob made thick from her saliva. The tip of her tongue traces her gums.

Joining Delta, a wild, grizzled wolf has found a pack to trod along with. Driven to extremes, she’s never stooped low enough to repeat the travesty at the St. John dairy farm. Hey, it’s another settlement trying to thrive. So, she got warped along the way, turned into a fury from loss. She lost sight of the good and turned kids into little soldiers. It’s wrong, it’s all fucking wrong, but Lilly seems to think that this is the only way to survive.

After aimless wandering, Delta reeled her in and for the first time in years, she considered their iron regiment and firm rules a **home**.

Cynicism runs deep. Her system works. She convinces herself of this when she spares Minerva a glance in the distance. No longer does the kid weep in her sleep; it’s a start.

Lilly wasn’t always this way. Innocence died years ago. Once, she’d been in Minnie Mouse’s shoes, grieving over fallen family taken too soon and how that loss made her do the unthinkable. Every time she wakes, she finds herself splattered in viscera. When Carley fell with a sudden thud, the gun felt heavy in her hands, but her body felt empty. _Hollow._ Null and fucking void. Vindictive and spiteful, there’s no getting better. It hurts and it hurts and it still fucking hurts.

Grief drives you wild. Carves away at the edifice of your beliefs. 

Her lips pull taut into a near permanent scowl. Laughter lines are just frown lines deepening. The years have hardened her. Made her sharper. Whether you want them to or not, the years roll by. Still standing despite the ache in her joints, apathy begins to set in stone. Oh, how she’s hardened. Cruelty replaces pragmatism. 

What would Dad say?

He was a mean, old vet who cared for his scared, little girl. He loved his daughter, she loved and missed her father.

Seeing Clem - Clementine - brings it all up again.

She cared for the kid. Gave her a soccer ball to kick and a few hair ties to tame that unruly mane of hers. The old Lilly might have been a bitch too, but, _fuck_, she cared. Now she snatches up children like some demented Mother Goose.

Shit, the heaviness in her chest never goes away. Maybe she’s out of tears. Run out on empty like the gas in that damned RV. Such a goddamned waste. Is there any room left for shame?

Mechanically, she drags herself forward. Burden stiffens her shoulders. Lilly flexes her fingers to ease the ache in her knuckles. Gravel presses against worn, rubber soles. The twinge in her right knee goes ignored. A swig of Jack sure would help. A fire in her belly would be a distraction from harsh reality. Wooden planks groan beneath her weight, yet calculated step. Shouldering her rifle, she neglects the slow burn in her muscles. Christ, since when did her joints first start to ache?

Autumn wind, brisk and fierce, howls against her sunken cheeks. Damp, cool air clings to her wrinkled, army surplus jacket. Her crudely chopped hair stays out of the way. Surrounded by ruin, hurt transforms into hate. 

Lilly whips out tobacco hand-rolled with a verse Biblical long forgotten. She bummed one from Abel. A fragment of Romans 12:19 glares back at her. _Fucker. _It won’t kill her. No, it won't. So, with a bent match, she lights the pathetic, little morsel. She takes a drag. Lets it blacken her lungs. Vice is a cig cherished come the creeping dawn. She takes it in with a deep, lingering sigh. 

Waste not, want not.

She inhales deep. Smoke fills her lungs. Burns them. And from the long drag, she nearly coughs. Tears up. The pain, however, comes from somewhere deeper. Her mind drifts back to happier days that were just as laden with stress. Back in the motel, they were a ragtag family working together just to survive. Forgiveness becomes a ruse. An intangible reality.

Living in a wasteland, a washed up world, she’s done some terrible, fucked up shit to survive and thrive. Sometimes, she feels sick with herself, but she won’t tell anyone that. Like Hell she needs anyone to call her weak. Expendable. Worthless.

Childhoods lost, there’s always a sacrifice. Clem’s just like Lee. It troubles her to see a kid with a saint complex. Her faith in others is admirable, but Lilly dismisses it as laughable. Kindness is weakness. Still, seeing her again isn’t easy. Now Clem’s looking after some kid taken right under her wing. It’s brave. It’s stupid. It’s heroic. It’s exactly what gets you killed.

What a tough (tenacious, brave), little girl.

Maybe Clem would be better off with Lilly – a familiar face despite being left behind, left to die. She inhales deeper this time, peering through the haze to witness the landscape caught in a delicate state of ruin, the branches as gnarled as her thorny disposition.

No, Clem’s better off without her. The revelation leaves her downright scornful, anger burns within her gaze. She chokes back something long forgotten, only to blame it on the nicotine. She rationalizes that the tears are from the smoke, from the ragged exhale that causes her to cough. The back of her worn glove brushes away the salty spray. 

Hollow-eyed, armed with unresolved trauma and fiery regret, Lilly resumes her patrol. The butt crunches and writhes beneath the heel of her boot until she kicks the dull glow into the water where she’ll be eventually sent to float away. Ashes spread across the ground like a warped ritual. How vicious she’s become in this sea of loathing and undead. 

Gunpowder and a tangy, metallic stench saturate the woods. A few walkers drag themselves along at a nowhere pace to some meaningless direction, unaware of their state of decay. Though she doesn’t have to, she takes it out on the dead, on the kids she reels in one by one to join Delta’s bloody purpose. _Kill who you have to_ seems to be a running mantra nowadays. Consider Lilly the Patron Saint of Lost Causes.

Tomorrow, they sack the place.

**Author's Note:**

> I noticed that some of Lilly's character design art revealed her smoking so I figured she could've bummed one off of Abel for this fic. 
> 
> Romans 12:19 - "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge, I will repay," says the Lord."
> 
> Thanks for taking this ride with me.


End file.
